bp oil spill

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

~Albert Einstein

This is so wrong. Did you know that BP segregated liability for the Gulf Coast Oil Spill so that only its subsidy BP Exploration and Production is liable for claims made resulting from the disaster? And that this subsidy is comprised of Gulf coast interests that rely on off-shore drilling? Did you know that BP has spent over $90 million dollars – or over $5 million a week – on advertising since the spill? And that is three times the amount of its advertising budget for the same period in 2009? Did you know that the judge who overturned the Obama Administration’s ban on off-shore drilling has extensive ties to and financial interests in the oil and gas industry? You must know by now we don’t have the technology to solve leaks in deep-water drilling. At the minimum, drilling should be banned until the technology for repairing the destruction catches up with the technology that causes it.

BP is going to slink away without taking true responsibility for the human, animal, and environmental devastation wrought due to their poor management and atrocious safety culture that led to the disaster. I’d like Bobby Jindal and other proponents of off-shore drilling to have spent a week living on a dinghy in the gulf two months ago. I’d like them to have had to bury the over 5,000 birds, 500 sea turtles, and 80 mammals killed in the wake of the spill. Maybe then they wouldn’t be so keen on inviting another disaster to the gulf.

In the blog, The PETA Files, Ingrid Newkirk argues that if any charges are brought against BP for the oil spill, animal cruelty should be among them. Newkirk almost presents this as fantasy, which of course it is, but she concluded her post by offering a number of personal choices that can make the world better for animals, including reducing meat consumption (or better yet going vegetarian), working to reduce or eliminate factory farming, and buying less gas and other petroleum-based products. All these suggestions are relevant, and so easy. But, for the record, I am totally OK with charging BP with animal cruelty.

Satellite images show the current shape of the oil spill – or disaster, catastrophe, murderous assault on sea life – whatever you prefer to call it. Perhaps looking at the size and shape of this spill, we can understand the comments of Tony Hayward, BP’s CEO, that the spill is a trifle compared to all that blue water in the Gulf of Mexico:

But, as suggested by this website, we should put the spill in perspective. Here’s the size compared to my current city, Ithaca:

For my family, here’s the spill compared to Ardmore, OK:

But maybe Tony Hayward would be more moved if we showed him this photo of the oil spill superimposed on a map of London: